Stackelberg competition

About: Stackelberg competition is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6611 publications have been published within this topic receiving 109213 citations.

Closed-Loop Supply Chain Models with Product Remanufacturing

Abstract: The importance of remanufacturing used products into new ones has been widely recognized in the literature and in practice. In this paper, we address the problem of choosing the appropriate reverse channel structure for the collection of used products from customers. Specifically, we consider a manufacturer who has three options for collecting such products: (1) she can collect them herself directly from the customers, (2) she can provide suitable incentives to an existing retailer (who already has a distribution channel) to induce the collection, or (3) she can subcontract the collection activity to a third party. Based on our observations in the industry, we model the three options described above as decentralized decision-making systems with the manufacturer being the Stackelberg leader. When considering decentralized channels, we find that ceteris paribus, the agent, who is closer to the customer (i.e., the retailer), is the most effective undertaker of product collection activity for the manufacturer. In addition, we show that simple coordination mechanisms can be designed such that the collection effort of the retailer and the supply chain profits are attained at the same level as in a centrally coordinated system.

Price Competition in a Channel Structure with a Common Retailer

Abstract: In recent studies of channel competition, it has been found that channel intermediaries reduce the intensity of direct competition between manufacturers. The underlying channel structure in most studies consists of two manufacturers and two retailers each of whom sells only one manufacturer's product exclusively. This paper adds to this growing literature of channel competition by analyzing a channel structure with two competing manufacturers and one intermediary a common retailer that sells both manufacturers' products. Unlike some exclusive dealers or retail outlets of a manufacturer, however, a common retailer is often a powerful player in the market. This paper studies three noncooperative games of different power structures between the two manufacturers and the retailer, i.e., two Stackelberg and one Nash games. It is shown that some of the results depend critically on the form of the demand function. With a linear demand function, a manufacturer is better off by maintaining exclusive dealers while a retailer has an incentive to deal with several producers. All channel members as well as consumers are better off when no one dominates the market. The common retailer benefits more than the manufacturers do from a symmetric decrease in the manufacturing cost. As products are less differentiated, all channel members' prices and profits increase: a counterintuitive result. When the demand function is nonlinear, however, an exclusive dealer channel provides higher profits to all than a common retailer channel given a power structure. As products are more differentiated, a manufacturer's profit decreases when a common retailer is used, but increases when an exclusive dealer is used. These results underscore the importance of choosing a correct demand function for a channel decision.

Crowdsourcing to smartphones: incentive mechanism design for mobile phone sensing

Abstract: Mobile phone sensing is a new paradigm which takes advantage of the pervasive smartphones to collect and analyze data beyond the scale of what was previously possible. In a mobile phone sensing system, the platform recruits smartphone users to provide sensing service. Existing mobile phone sensing applications and systems lack good incentive mechanisms that can attract more user participation. To address this issue, we design incentive mechanisms for mobile phone sensing. We consider two system models: the platform-centric model where the platform provides a reward shared by participating users, and the user-centric model where users have more control over the payment they will receive. For the platform-centric model, we design an incentive mechanism using a Stackelberg game, where the platform is the leader while the users are the followers. We show how to compute the unique Stackelberg Equilibrium, at which the utility of the platform is maximized, and none of the users can improve its utility by unilaterally deviating from its current strategy. For the user-centric model, we design an auction-based incentive mechanism, which is computationally efficient, individually rational, profitable, and truthful. Through extensive simulations, we evaluate the performance and validate the theoretical properties of our incentive mechanisms.

Dependable Demand Response Management in the Smart Grid: A Stackelberg Game Approach

Abstract: Demand Response Management (DRM) is a key component in the smart grid to effectively reduce power generation costs and user bills. However, it has been an open issue to address the DRM problem in a network of multiple utility companies and consumers where every entity is concerned about maximizing its own benefit. In this paper, we propose a Stackelberg game between utility companies and end-users to maximize the revenue of each utility company and the payoff of each user. We derive analytical results for the Stackelberg equilibrium of the game and prove that a unique solution exists. We develop a distributed algorithm which converges to the equilibrium with only local information available for both utility companies and end-users. Though DRM helps to facilitate the reliability of power supply, the smart grid can be succeptible to privacy and security issues because of communication links between the utility companies and the consumers. We study the impact of an attacker who can manipulate the price information from the utility companies. We also propose a scheme based on the concept of shared reserve power to improve the grid reliability and ensure its dependability.